The merchant's profit well rewards his toil:
The souldier crowns his labours with the spoil:
To servile flattery we altars raise:
And the kind wife her stallion ever pays:
But starving wit in rags takes barren pain:
And, dying, seeks the muses aid in vain.
"'Tis certain," added he, "that a lover of virtue, on account of his
singularity, meets with contempt; for who can approve what differs
from himself? And that those who admire riches, wou'd fain possess
every body, that nothing is more reasonable than their opinion; whence
they ridicule, as well as they can, the learned few; that they, like
themselves, might seem within the power of money."
"I don't know, how learning and poverty became relations," said I, and
sigh'd: "You justly lament," return'd he, "the condition of scholars."
"You mistake me," said I, "that's not the occasion of my sighs,
there's another and much greater cause:" And, as all men are naturally
inclin'd to communicate their grief; I laid open my case to him,
beginning with Ascyltos's treachery, which I aggravated; and, with
repeated sighs, often wisht his injustice to me might have deserv'd
pardon: but that now he was a staunch villain, and in lust more subtle
than the bawds themselves.
The old man, seeing me sincere, began to comfort me; and the better to
effect it, told me what formerly had happen'd to himself on the like
occasion.
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